Fall as Hard
by writergirl8
Summary: Percy has been perving on the librarian for three years now. Okay, not perving. Maybe perving is the wrong word. Falling utterly and completely in love? That might be the right way to put it. Percy has spent three years falling utterly and completely in love with Annabeth Chase.


Percy has been perving on the librarian for three years now.

Okay, not perving. Maybe _perving _is the wrong word. Falling utterly and completely in love? That might be the right way to put it. Percy has spent three years falling utterly and completely in love with the librarian. Like, to the point that he spends double the time reading than he did in college, despite the fact that he'd been forced to take Russian Literature due to a terrible snafu involving credits and schedule conflicts.

Except, now, he's spending way too many nights in the small, drafty town library. He'd moved out here almost immediately after college when he'd applied for a firefighter job in the sleepy little town where one of his best friends from college, Piper, worked at the music school. He'd interviewed twice, showed off his credentials, and ended up getting the position.

A New Yorker through and through, Percy had never quite pictured himself living in a place like this. There's about four stores in the entire town. The nearest Dunkin' Doughnuts is fifteen minutes away. The nearest Starbucks is twenty-five. There's a town Market, which opens at 6 AM and closes at 9 PM, and every Sunday morning, the group of older timers stand outside in the thick air, drinking coffee out of white cups and talking about the good ol' days. There's a tiny post office, with a grumpy lady who hates it when Percy rings the bell multiple times. There's the little red music school where Piper gives voice lessons. There's an auto shop where another one of his friends, Leo, fixes cars. There's also a tiny little ice cream stand next to a farm stand, and there's a House of Pizza that everybody eats at. The town is so small that everybody is a regular, which Percy sort of loves.

And that's it. Aside from the library, that's the entire town.

When Percy had first moved there, he'd thought that he would be bored out of his mind. Living alone in the middle of nowhere with not even a Chipotle to keep him company? It had sounded like hell at first. But then, the night he'd moved in, the power had gone out, as he'd learned it did often in the tiny, creaky town. And it takes National Grid about three hours to get there because there were only 3,000 residents, which totally sucked at the time because Percy didn't have a generator. So he had wandered into the library, and there she was.

He's been showing up at least four times a week since then. Sometimes more. It's not like he could ever run _out _of books to read, but he's been moderating himself just to make sure he doesn't. He has to read one fiction, then a nonfiction, then a mystery, then something from the children's section just for kicks. And sometime around the third novel in the _Little House on the Prairie _series, he'd decided that he was in love.

Annabeth Chase is the youngest librarian. She's the research librarian, so she mostly has to look up a bunch of old people's family histories and talk to them about their Irish relatives- everybody in their town is either Italian or Irish. There is no in between. But she also does normal things, like check out books and put them on shelves, and one time Percy noticed her straining to reach so he brought her a chair to stand on and seeing her smile of thanks was one of the most riveting moments of his life. Honestly, he'd almost had a heart attack.

He's _heard _her talk a lot, but he rarely talks to her personally. This is mostly the extent of their conversations:

**Percy: **Hi, can I check this out?

**Annabeth: **Sure. Do you have your card?

**Percy: **Yep, it's on my keys. That way I never lose it.

**Annabeth (dryly): **You're a genius. (long pause) Oh, The Book Thief. This one's great.

**Percy: **It's my second time through. I cried the first. Ha. Hahaha. (cough)

**Annabeth: **The writing is so beautiful... it's like reading a painting.

**Percy: **Oh, yeah, I felt that way about The Great Gatsby.

**Annabeth: **Mmm, yeah. Well, have a nice evening.

**Percy: **Oh, ah, er... right. You too!

Three years. Three years of _this_. He's probably going to go mad from it. Cause of death: Small talk.

Percy sees her interacting with customers and her coworkers; watches her laughing or scowling or bending over her desk, sketching intently when the library is slow. He knows that she's a grad student who is only working here temporarily; knows that she wants to be an architect. Knows that she grew up in San Francisco. Can tell when she gets impatient with a patron, or can see the face she makes when somebody tries to check out a DVD when they have a book that's six months overdue.

Other than that, Annabeth Chase is a blank canvas.

Piper, Jason, and Leo had totally noticed how much he'd been going to the library and had figured out, way too quickly, that it wasn't _exactly _for the books- although he loves those too. Two days later, Piper had thrown a dinner party, and Annabeth was there. They're good friends, both having grown up here. Percy's pretty sure he's going to have to talk to Annabeth at some point in the future, because they're probably going to be best man and maid-of-honor at Jason and Piper's wedding.

Whenever he asks Piper about her, she just gives him a look and tells him to find out himself. It's a good point. He never listens.

Tonight, the library is basically dead when Percy strolls in. He's been struggling his way through _The Handmaid's Tale_, which is weird as fuck but also cool in ways that Percy doesn't quite understand. He tucks himself into a corner and spends about ten minutes finding his place. He's just getting settled back into the story when his cell phone begins vibrating in his pocket, showing Jason's face. Rolling his eyes, Percy grabs the phone and snatches his I.D out of his pocket to use as a wallet.

"Hey, dude," he says once he's outside. "What's up?"

"I need a pep talk," Jason says. "Now."

"Bro," says Percy. "I _save lives_ every day. Proposing to your girlfriend is not nearly as scary as running into a building full of _flames _and carry human beings out of the buildings."

"We have fires in this town, like, twice a year," Jason snorts. "You spend the vast majority of your time working out and getting kittens down from trees."

"And the kittens are always very grateful."

"Percy. Pep talk."

"Fine," Percy sighs. "But I can't be too loud, okay?" There's silence. "Jason, are you nodding?" More silence. "Yeah, I thought so." He clears his throat, then says, "Piper's going to say yes. It's going to be amazing. You're going to get married and have perfect little babies and it's going to be like that Taylor Swift music video... fuck, which one is it?"

"Mine?" suggests Jason.

"Yeah, Mine," Percy nods. "It's gonna be like that. All you gotta do is suck it up and not fuck it up. That's it. Then you slide the ring on her finger and in nine months or more, you get married."

"'Kay," Jason says, breathing out. "Yeah. I'm gonna propose to my girlfriend."

"Do it."

"I'm gonna propose the _crap _out of her."

"I triple doggie dare you to."

"I _will_!"

"Bye, Jason."

"BYE!"

He heads back into the library and to his armchair, where he is shocked to find the book missing. _Shit_. He goes back to where it was on the shelves, but it isn't there. He checks the front desk and the shelving cart, but it isn't there either. One of the librarians must have grabbed it and put it somewhere. Percy looks around for Dorothy or Shelley, but he doesn't see either of them. He does, of course, see Annabeth.

Right. Okay.

She's standing on a stool, wearing a green skirt with a black sweater tucked into it. The skirt is pulled up to where her torso is narrowest, making her waist look curvy, and Percy sort of can't stop staring at it. His waist doesn't go in like that. And the way her shirt is shaped shows absolutely no cleavage but affords him an excellent view of her collarbones. Her hair had been down when he'd walked into the library, but now she's got it tugged up into a ponytail, and he can see the scar in the curve of her neck that he's been staring at for the last three years.

All he has to do is approach her. It's not that hard. He has abs and biceps. He can do this.

He walks towards her, then panics and pretends that he was going for the DVDs. Annabeth moves off to help someone else in the children's room. He stealthily follows.

Or maybe not so stealthily, because Annabeth whips around, her long ponytail almost flying through the air.

"Can I help you?" she asks, and he realizes that he's never been quite this close to her. Her eyes are startling gray behind the lenses of her thick-framed black glasses.

"Uhm," he says, stuttering for a moment. "I- er- left my I.D in a book. _The Handmaid's Tale_."

"Oh!" she says. "Yeah, somebody reserved it and I was going to get it when I saw it on the chair, so I just grabbed it. It's under the desk."

She walks towards the desk and heads behind it. For a moment, Percy is silent. He watches her search for the book and pick it up.

"Do you want to check it out?"

"Sure," he says, although he's probably going to stay until closing to finish it up. He doesn't have much of a reason to go home, except the episode of _Arrow _he has on his DVR.

Annabeth reaches out a hand for his library card and he wordlessly hands it to her, trying not to think about the fact that he is twenty-five years old and his hands are sweating like mad.

"So Jason's proposing to Piper tonight."

Annabeth smirks.

"She knows."

"_What_?"

"Next time, he shouldn't keep the ring box in his George Washington University hoodie. Pipes borrows it all the time."

"Next time?" Percy says, raising a pointed eyebrow at Annabeth, and she laughs.

"Just in case Piper turns him down because his proposal wasn't creative enough." Percy winces. That would suck so bad. "Do you know what he's doing?"

"Hiding the ring-box within a series of abstract art paintings," he replies, straight-faced. "Creative enough for you?" She stares, eyebrows raised. "Nah, I'm kidding. He made her a really nice dinner and drew her a bath and he has a speech prepared. And seeing as he's trained to be a political speechwriter, I'm assuming he's going to nail it."

"How's that going to help? 'Vote for marriage,'" Annabeth says, snorting a little bit as she hands Percy his book.

"Annabeth," he says, staring her dead in the eyes. "Marriage equality is a very serious issue in American society."

She snatches the book out of his hands and hits him with it.

"You _know _that's not-"

"I know," he grins. "Just teasing you."

"Next time you tease me, try not to make me sound like a bigot," Annabeth suggests. "It's, like, flirting 101."

Percy almost vomits.

"Flirting? No, I'm not- this is just normal, casual, everyday-"

She looks horrified.

"No, I'm so sorry!" she says, cutting him off. "Oh god, that just came out, I'm so sorry."

Percy's heart slows. So she doesn't know how he feels about her. His dignity is still in tact.

"Kay," he says. "Well, um, I'm just gonna go. Cuz I'm probably really red right now and it's clashing with my shirt."

He swallows hard, then turns around to head towards the door.

"Percy!" come a desperate voice. He turns around at the sound of her speaking. "Um... if you were. You know. Flirting. Then that would be okay."

He starts to smile. "Yeah?" And she nods. "Would this be because I fight fires so you think that you owe me some thrill in my quiet life, or because Piper told you not to bully me and you don't want her to get mad, or-" 

"None of the above," laughs Annabeth.

One of the patrons shushes them. Percy glances over to where she's sitting in a plushy green armchair. She's sunk so far down that he is almost positive she will need help getting out.

"Sorry, Mrs. Proto," he stage-whispers. "How's Whiskers doing?"

Her annoyance melts into delight as she realizes who she was shushing, and she begins to speak excitedly of her cat.

"Can you just put this on hold, Mrs. Proto?" Annabeth calls over to the woman. "I'm kind of... doing a bit."

"A bit?" frowns the woman, just as Percy asks, "What kind of bit?"

Annabeth clears her throat, then beckons Percy closer. He walks up to the help desk and places his hands on it. Annabeth glances down at them.

"I was going to say," she says, "that if you want to flirt with me over a cup of coffee, that might be okay."

"Might?"

"Would. That would be okay."

"_Okay_?"

"God you're picky. Good. That would be good."

"Oh, go out with her, Percy!" calls Mrs. Proto from her armchair. "You two would make beautiful children."

They both turn to her with slightly panicked eyes. She winks at them and goes innocently back to her book.

"Okay then," Percy says. "In that case, I guess I have to go out to coffee with you."

"Because we're going to make beautiful babies?" she asks disbelievingly.

"No. Because you asked and you're okay with me flirting with you."

"Oh," she says breathily. "Yeah. I am."

"Even though I'm terrible at flirting."

"That's okay. I get really rude when I have a crush on someone."

He pauses.

"You have a crush on me?"

He can actually _see _the panic in Annabeth's eyes.

"We're closing," she says immediately.

"It's 7:56. I have three minutes."

"You have no minutes. I have to dust the shelves and clean the bedpans."

"You have a crush on me," he laughs, amazed. "Oh fuck. This is insane."

"Why is it insane?" she asks defensively. "You come in here for three years straight and you read and you chew on your lip and run your heads through your stupidly messy hair and you used to struggle to focus on books but now you barely lose your focus for anything and-"

He kisses her, right over the help desk.

She smells like books and tastes like coffee and, yep, he's definitely in love with a girl he's only talked to a few times in his life.

This could be bad.

But it's so, so good.

**A/N: This was based off of a drabble request on tumblr: "you accidentally left your ID in a library book." I went just a tad bit overboard with it, but I also absolutely love it. For now, it is complete, but I would love to write more. This town is already so fun and I love librarian!Annabeth's outfits. She's such a hipster sometimes. **

**Song title from "Thinking Out Loud" by Ed Sheeran. Thanks for reading, and let me know if you want more :) ~writergirl8**


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